How to Strengthen Your Experiential Learning

Your skill and knowledge increase with reflective writing and learning

What comes to mind when you think of learning something new? Does it mean taking up a hobby, earning an academic qualification, training in a sport, or trying a different career?

What happens when we learn?

Learning is about growing in knowledge and improving our understanding.

Learning allows us to develop new skills or refine those we already have.

Learning also encourages a change. A change could be in our attitudes, our values, and how we perceive the world around us.

The learning model I want to describe is a never-ending cycle of our experiences, or sequences of how we translate our reflective processes into concepts. By internalizing these reflections, we can use them as guides for our active experimentation.

This is how we can embrace new learning experiences for ourselves.

Recently, I discovered I was living and learning through this never-ending cycle, without being fully aware of the labels.

A treasure hunt before moving

Preparing to reduce the packing and declutter the house, I sit in the study and open drawers and folders.

So much I don’t remember, but I kept it safe. As I reminisce, recall, and shred papers, I browse the contents to be sure I no longer need to keep it.

I balance an elderly, tapestry and leather briefcase on my lap and slide the locks. The lid springs upward on brass hinges. The document pocket in the cover leans toward me, weighed down by the volume of paper tucked inside it. The pen pockets are empty except for a solitary fountain pen, staining the plush interior with violet-colored ink. I find the case scattered with journals, colored pages of typewritten notes, clusters of crooked pages clipped together, an assortment of laminated bookmarks, guest cards to the Golden Wings lounge of a now defunct airline, and a folder of speeches drafted as ideas for Toastmasters’ assignments.

I see the edge of a plastic sleeve padded with typed sheets. Curiously, I pick it up and flick through multiple pages of formally addressed letters. I glance at the top of the first few, then scan to the closing where I find I am the author.

I yield to my past as I recheck the addressees.

How journals can help reflection

I keep several journals for different purposes; a Filofax organizer and planner, a creative writing journal, and many digital journals. Additionally, from the time I left home at 17, I’ve been a writer of lengthy letters.

As we know, there are convincing health benefits from journaling or recording our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, such as these five broad assets to:

• reduce stress
• improve immune function
• enhance memory
• improve mood, wellbeing, and happiness
• strengthen emotional functions.

We know the positive features of journaling and the increasing number of devotees of Julia Cameron who says,

We should write because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because writing is good for the soul — Julia Cameron, Right to Write.

Of course, we can enlarge any of these simple categories or virtues outlined above, into increased benefits of journaling. The benefits are endless.

We also know the more we write, the better our writing becomes. Like a muscle we strengthen, our writing improves. Writing is also a part of different learning styles, like reflective learning.

How we grow from reflective learning

Anne de la Croix and Mario Veen wrote about “The Reflective Zombie” in 2018, as they identified flaws in the conceptual framework of reflection in medical education. The authors “fear that in this process of operationalization, the philosophical underpinnings of reflection have been discarded” as students follow prescribed thought steps and checklists rather than engaging in reflection.

De la Croix and Veen note, while we celebrate developments in teaching, and researching reflection in education, we’re looking at reflection in the wrong way, use the wrong tools, and we don’t know what we want to know.

The authors offer these suggestions to remedy the flaws:

• acknowledge the diversity of reflection and let go of the ‘checklist approach’
• embrace the personal nature of reflection by stimulating awareness of one’s reflection styles as part of the reflective process
• shift the focus of research to the practice of reflection.

Reflection, according to K. C. Fragkos,

…is a metacognitive process in which a person is engaged in attentive, critical, exploratory and iterative interactions with his thoughts and actions to change them, hence it is powerful equipment of experiential learning — Reflective Practice in Healthcare Education, 2016.

Fragkos believes two necessary elements for continued competence are attention to self and critical reflection on your situation. The author is appraising a model developed by psychologist David Kolb in 1984, where Kolb defines this form of learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” Kolb says our knowledge results from a combination of grasping and transforming our experience, and reminiscent of the Piaget era, Kolb believes,

Experiential learning theory differs from cognitive and behavioral theories in that it takes a more holistic approach and emphasizes how experiences, including cognition, environmental factors, and emotions, influence the learning process.

Kolb’s experiential learning theory has two levels: A four-stage learning cycle and four learning styles embedded between the stages.

1. Concrete Experience — (Sensing and Feeling).
2. Reflective Observation — (Watching/Reflecting).
3. Abstract Conceptualization — (Analyzing and Thinking).
4. Active Experimentation — (Doing/Behaving).

Reflective writing study

A small study conducted with medical and dental students, shows how reflective writing can enhance professional development and learning experiences as well as improve memory. The researchers found reflective writing worked in nursing; however, it was rare for this to be a part of the daily work of medical education or practice.

The researchers noted:

Despite the importance of reflective writing, there is a general lack of awareness of different purposes of reflection for learning — Benefits of Reflective Writing in Health Care through the Vivid Lens of House Officers, 31 March 2020.

The study confirmed that reflective writing did enhance learning. A majority (81%) of the participants agreed reflection did alter clinical behavior and reduced treatment errors.

Although only a small study, the findings show great promise for implementing psychology models into areas of self-directed learning. The model may reflect on experiences to reinforce our learning and to cultivate our empathy.

Reflective writing benefits in self-directed learning

My letters reflected specific experiences in my nursing or management roles. They addressed my cognitive processes with issues raised by my experiences, through my writing and reflection to make sense of my world. Secondly, I addressed the letters to my father as I did after I left home. Of course, I never posted these letters. Many were dated well after his death.

My reflective writing was a mentoring method with a familial and spiritual connection to me. As Cameron says,

“writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.”

Reflection is an essential part of the learning process because it can result in making sense of or extracting meaning from our experiences. Of enormous benefit is how critical reflection or critical thinking can focus on us becoming aware of our faulty assumptions and thinking processes.

Scope of self-directed learning

What I found from reading my letters was how so many aspects of different disciplines have areas of overlap, and different learning styles to consider. And how our assorted styles of learning need flexibility to discover what works for us.

Kolb’s model explains how we can link theory to practice. The model highlights three benefits. That is:

• experience as a critical part of our learning
• reflection takes place before we learn
• feedback to reinforce our knowledge.

Considering these points in more detail, it’s clear our learning must start with our experience then create the opportunity to reflect.

Psychology adopted for self-directed education

We can summarize experiential learning as a method for learning styles in a variety of disciplines such as:

• students interacting with and caring for, vulnerable people
• management and leadership styles
• learners guided by self-directed reflective plans and ongoing action plans.

And as de la Croix and Veen write,

a strong vision on reflection can lead to a balanced curriculum, setting students up for a lifelong learning as a reflective practitioner.

Detractors of Kolb’s model criticize the lack of quantitative evidence, limited research base, limited empirical studies, plus insufficient attention to different cultural conditions and experiences. However, de la Croix and Veen suggest the researchers need to look further into the interaction between students and between the teachers and students.

As mentioned, although we can learn from what we do, our experience alone is not sufficient for us to know, understand, and transform. To reiterate, we need to review our concrete experiences by reflecting on them.

We can document what we do, process our observations, assimilate our thinking into concepts then into active experimentation of learning as I did in my ‘journal’ letters.

And the cycle continues, but we’ll have changed.

Our change is our conceptual conclusion.

We can integrate reflective learning into whatever we do to gain knowledge, and our conclusions will, in turn, direct the active experimentation for us when we plan our next step.